How I learned to love the “vengeful Old Testament God”

For more than a month now, I’ve been leading the adult education class of my wee kirk in a long, careful reading through the Psalms, those ancient spiritual songs of the Hebrew people. Though we typically read one each week in our liturgy, it’s rare that we stop and savor them, and it has been a remarkably interesting journey.

Part of the reason it has been so fascinating is the wild shifts in voice and tonality that comes from this millennia-spanning collection of sacred lyrics. The book of Psalms speaks from so many different contexts. You’ve got personal anguish. You’ve got pride in the power of the monarch. You’ve got pride in the inherent blessedness of a nation. You’ve got wisdom. You’ve got woe. You’ve got celebrations of creation and wedding marches.

And intermixed in there, you’ve got a whole bunch of songs calling on God to kick in the teeth of those who oppose us. My class has particularly struggled with these, as have I. 

Generally, the spiritual read we get from those texts is . . . nothing. They feel more than a little brutish, more than a little petty, pulling the Creator of the Universe down to the level of our endless human squabbles. It’s easy, as one reads, to simply attribute such things to what is often described as the “Vengeful Old Testament God,” which is to be distinguished from what theologians call the “Sparklefairy Wuv New Testament God.”